Google Street View is a technology featured in Google Maps and Google Earth that provides panoramic views from positions along many streets in the world. It was launched in 2007 in several cities in the United States, and has since expanded to include cities and rural areas worldwide. Streets with Street View imagery available are shown as blue lines on Google Maps.

Google Street View displays panoramas of stitched images. Most photography is done by car, but some is done by trekker, tricycle, walking, boat, snowmobile, and underwater apparatus.

Contents

History and features

Street View had its inception in 2001 with The Stanford CityBlock Project, a Google-sponsored Stanford University research project, the project ended in June 2006, and its technology was folded into StreetView.[4]

2007: Launched on May 25 in the United States using Immersive Media technology.

2008: In May Google announces that it was testing face-blurring technology on its photos of the busy streets of Manhattan.[5] The technology uses a computer algorithm to search Google's image database for faces and blurs them.[6] Street View integrated into Google Earth 4.3, the Maps application on the Apple iPhone, and the Maps application for S60 3rd Edition. In November, the drag and drop Pegman icon is introduced as the primary user interface element for connecting from Maps's 2D view into Street View's 3D view. When Pegman is dropped onto a particular set of coordinates in Google Maps for which Street View data is available, Street View opens and takes over the whole map window.

2009: Introduction of full-screen option. Smart Navigation introduced allowing users to navigate around the panoramas by double-clicking with their cursor on any place or object they want to see.[7]

2010: Indoor views of businesses available.[8] Google invites users to contribute panoramas of their own using gadgets with Android 4.2. Google highlights user-contributed panoramas with blue circle icons on Maps, the company also created a website to highlight places in the world where one can find them.[9]

2013: Business interior views are shown as small orange circles. Businesses such as shops, cafés and other premises can pay a photographer to take panoramic images of the interior of their premises which are then included in Street View.[10] Google sets up program to let third parties borrow the Street View Trekker (a backpack mounted camera) and contribute imagery to Google Maps.[11]

2014: Street-level imagery from the past can now be seen, if available for a given street view.[12]

2017: Starting in August, Google allows users to create their own street view-like blue paths, for the connected photospheres that are sufficiently close to one another.

2017: On September 5, Google announced that they are improving the quality of the street view panoramic photo revamping its mapping vehicles with all-new high resolution camera systems and AI to capture even better imagery. The new Google cars have been seen in various American cities since March 2017 as well as in Japan since August.[15][16][17][18][19]. The first images taken with the new generation of cameras were available online on September 13.[20]

2017: Since October, Google allows users to capture Street View imagery using Insta360 Pro. Because of this, several years from now, Google Street View could be available in all countries of the world.[21][22][23][24][25]

2018: Google Japan now offers the street view from a dog's perspective.[26]

Implementation

Street View is available as a component of Google Maps, as a web application, and as a mobile application for Android and iOS. Originally, Google Maps used Adobe Flash for Street View.[27] Google overhauled Google Maps in 2013, the newer version uses JavaScript extensively and provides a JavaScript application programming interface.[28] At the time of their release, the new Google Maps and Street View are measured slower than the old version in various setups.[29][30] A user can switch to the old version of Google Maps, which is especially useful when Google Maps is more sluggish than usual.[31][32]

Laser range scanners from Sick AG for the measuring of up to 50 meters 180° in the front of the vehicle.[38] These are used for recording the actual dimensions of the space being photographed.

LIDAR scanners from Velodyne were added in the 2017 update. Mounted at 45° to capture 3D depth information, and used for additional positional information.[37]

Vehicles: data recording equipment is usually mounted on the roof of a car. A Trike (tricycle) was developed to record pedestrian routes including Stonehenge, and other UNESCOWorld Heritage sites; in 2010 a snowmobile-based system captured the 2010 Winter Olympics sites.[33] Trolleys have been used to shoot the insides of museums, and in Venice the narrow roads were photographed with backpack-mounted cameras, and canals were photographed from boats.[39]

A portable back-pack Google Trekker is used in outdoor terrain. For instance, the six main paths up Snowdon were mapped by the Google Trekker in 2015.[40]

Pegman

As noted above, the drag-and-drop Pegman icon is the primary user interface element used by Google to connect Maps to Street View, his name comes from his resemblance to a clothespeg. When not in use, Pegman sits atop the Google Maps zoom controls. Occasionally Pegman "dresses up" for special events or is joined by peg friends in Google Maps. When dragged into Street View near Area 51, he becomes a flying saucer. When viewing older views, the Pegman in the minimap changes to Doc Brown from Back to the Future.[41]

Privacy concerns

Google Street View will blur houses for any user who makes a request, in addition to the automatic blurring of faces and licence plates.[42] Privacy advocates have objected to the Google Street View, pointing to views found to show men leaving strip clubs, protesters at an abortion clinic, sunbathers in bikinis, and people engaging in activities visible from public property in which they do not wish to be seen publicly.[43] Another concern is the height of the cameras, and in at least two countries, Japan[44] and Switzerland,[45] Google has had to lower the height of its cameras so as to not peer over fences and hedges, the service also allows users themselves to flag inappropriate or sensitive imagery for Google to review and remove.[46]Police Scotland received an apology for wasting police time in 2014 from a local business owner in Edinburgh who in 2012 had staged a fake murder for the Google camera car by lying in the road "while his colleague stood over him with a pickaxe handle".[47] In May 2010, it was revealed that Google had collected and stored payload data from unencrypted Wi-Fi connections as part of Street View.[48] German authorities are considering legal action while the Foreign Minister said "I will do all I can to prevent it." Australian police have also been ordered to investigate.[49]

The concerns have led to Google not providing or suspending the service in countries around the world.

Austria: Google Street View was banned in Austria because Google was found to collect Wifi data unauthorized in 2010. After the ban was lifted rules were set up for how Street View can operate legally in Austria. Google has yet to resume service. Officially it welcomed the new guidelines but has ruled out operating under them, as of 2016 Google Street View is still unavailable.[50]

Australia: In 2010, Google Street View ceased operations in Australia, following months of investigations from Australian authorities.[51] However, this cessation has since ended, with Google announcing plans to continue production on May 4, 2011[52] and subsequently releasing updated Street View imagery for Australian towns and cities on July 27, 2011.[53]

Germany: In 2011, after having put online the pictures of the 20 largest cities, Google stopped taking Street View images in Germany.[54]

India: In 2011, Google stopped taking street images in India, after receiving a letter from police authorities in Bangalore.[55]

Canada: Street View cars had been spotted as early as September 2007, in Montréal, though service for Canada was delayed while attempting to settle with the Canadian government over its privacy laws. Privacy and town beauty concerns were dealt with and Street View is available in Montréal and other Canadian cities (as of 2016).[56]

Swedish programmer Anton Wallén developed a game called GeoGuessr, which places players into a Google Street View and has them guess its location.[62]

Canadian artist, Sylvia Grace Borda, worked in conjunction with John M Lynch between 2013-14[63][64]to insert the first staged tableaux[65] into the Google Street View engine. Their efforts won them the Lumen Prize in 2016[66]. Borda has continued independently to author in the Google Street View engine and in 2017 created the tableaux series, the Kissing Project.[67]

Coverage

Countries and dependencies with mostly full coverage

Countries and dependencies with partial coverage

Countries and dependencies with full or partial coverage planned (official)

Countries and dependencies with full or partial coverage planned (unofficial)

Countries and dependencies with views of selected businesses and/or tourist attractions only

1.
Manchester
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Manchester is a major city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England, with a population of 514,414 as of 2013. It lies within the United Kingdoms second-most populous urban area, with a population of 2.55 million, Manchester is fringed by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east and an arc of towns with which it forms a continuous conurbation. The local authority is Manchester City Council and it was historically a part of Lancashire, although areas of Cheshire south of the River Mersey were incorporated during the 20th century. Throughout the Middle Ages Manchester remained a township but began to expand at an astonishing rate around the turn of the 19th century. Manchesters unplanned urbanisation was brought on by a boom in textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution, Manchester achieved city status in 1853. The Manchester Ship Canal opened in 1894, creating the Port of Manchester and its fortunes declined after the Second World War, owing to deindustrialisation. The city centre was devastated in a bombing in 1996, but it led to extensive investment, in 2014, the Globalization and World Cities Research Network ranked Manchester as a beta world city, the highest-ranked British city apart from London. Manchester is the third-most visited city in the UK and it is notable for its architecture, culture, musical exports, media links, scientific and engineering output, social impact, sports clubs and transport connections. Manchester Liverpool Road railway station was the worlds first inter-city passenger railway station and in the city scientists first split the atom, the name Manchester originates from the Latin name Mamucium or its variant Mancunium and the citizens are still referred to as Mancunians. These are generally thought to represent a Latinisation of an original Brittonic name, both meanings are preserved in languages derived from Common Brittonic, mam meaning breast in Irish and mother in Welsh. The suffix -chester is a survival of Old English ceaster and their territory extended across the fertile lowland of what is now Salford and Stretford. Central Manchester has been settled since this time. A stabilised fragment of foundations of the version of the Roman fort is visible in Castlefield. After the Roman withdrawal and Saxon conquest, the focus of settlement shifted to the confluence of the Irwell, much of the wider area was laid waste in the subsequent Harrying of the North. Thomas de la Warre, lord of the manor, founded and constructed a church for the parish in 1421. The church is now Manchester Cathedral, the premises of the college house Chethams School of Music. The library, which opened in 1653 and is open to the public today, is the oldest free public reference library in the United Kingdom. Manchester is mentioned as having a market in 1282, around the 14th century, Manchester received an influx of Flemish weavers, sometimes credited as the foundation of the regions textile industry

2.
England
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England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west, the Irish Sea lies northwest of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east, the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain in its centre and south, and includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly, and the Isle of Wight. England became a state in the 10th century, and since the Age of Discovery. The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the worlds first industrialised nation, Englands terrain mostly comprises low hills and plains, especially in central and southern England. However, there are uplands in the north and in the southwest, the capital is London, which is the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland through another Act of Union to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain, the name England is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means land of the Angles. The Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages, the Angles came from the Angeln peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea. The earliest recorded use of the term, as Engla londe, is in the ninth century translation into Old English of Bedes Ecclesiastical History of the English People. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars, it has been suggested that it derives from the shape of the Angeln peninsula, an angular shape. An alternative name for England is Albion, the name Albion originally referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus, specifically the 4th century BC De Mundo, in it are two very large islands called Britannia, these are Albion and Ierne. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, the word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins. Albion is now applied to England in a poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England, Lloegr, the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximately 780,000 years ago. The oldest proto-human bones discovered in England date from 500,000 years ago, Modern humans are known to have inhabited the area during the Upper Paleolithic period, though permanent settlements were only established within the last 6,000 years

3.
Software release life cycle
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Usage of the alpha/beta test terminology originated at IBM. As long ago as the 1950s, IBM used similar terminology for their hardware development, a test was the verification of a new product before public announcement. B test was the verification before releasing the product to be manufactured, C test was the final test before general availability of the product. Martin Belsky, a manager on some of IBMs earlier software projects claimed to have invented the terminology, IBM dropped the alpha/beta terminology during the 1960s, but by then it had received fairly wide notice. The usage of beta test to refer to testing done by customers was not done in IBM, rather, IBM used the term field test. Pre-alpha refers to all activities performed during the project before formal testing. These activities can include requirements analysis, software design, software development, in typical open source development, there are several types of pre-alpha versions. Milestone versions include specific sets of functions and are released as soon as the functionality is complete, the alpha phase of the release life cycle is the first phase to begin software testing. In this phase, developers generally test the software using white-box techniques, additional validation is then performed using black-box or gray-box techniques, by another testing team. Moving to black-box testing inside the organization is known as alpha release, alpha software can be unstable and could cause crashes or data loss. Alpha software may not contain all of the features that are planned for the final version, in general, external availability of alpha software is uncommon in proprietary software, while open source software often has publicly available alpha versions. The alpha phase usually ends with a freeze, indicating that no more features will be added to the software. At this time, the software is said to be feature complete, Beta, named after the second letter of the Greek alphabet, is the software development phase following alpha. Software in the stage is also known as betaware. Beta phase generally begins when the software is complete but likely to contain a number of known or unknown bugs. Software in the phase will generally have many more bugs in it than completed software, as well as speed/performance issues. The focus of beta testing is reducing impacts to users, often incorporating usability testing, the process of delivering a beta version to the users is called beta release and this is typically the first time that the software is available outside of the organization that developed it. Beta version software is useful for demonstrations and previews within an organization

4.
Coverage of Google Street View
–
Many areas that had coverage were represented by icons. On May 25,2007, Street View was announced, on May 30,2007, at the Where 2. Immersive Media continued to do image capture for Street View until Google developed its own capability to do so, since July 2007, Google has used imagery that belongs exclusively to Google. On April 16,2008, Street View was fully integrated into Google Earth 4.3, on May 12,2008, Google announced that it was testing face-blurring technology on its photos of the busy streets of Manhattan. The technology uses an algorithm to search Googles image database for faces and blurs them, according to John Hanke, director of Google Earth. Also, many nearby areas were included, but they did not receive their own camera icons. On July 2,2008, Google Street View was introduced in France and Italy, providing the first service outside the United States, included in the update were approximately 40 new U. S. hub cities. On November 26,2008, the Street View button and all the icons were deleted. Instead of clicking the Street View button, this is now accessed using the button in the left hand corner. When the pegman icon is dragged over the map blue polylines appear where Street View is available, if this is dropped on the map the Street View opens and takes over the whole map window. On December 1,2008, New Zealand was added to Google Street View, faces were blurred upon recommendation by the New Zealand Privacy Commission, but vehicle registration plates were not obscured. On April 9,2009, Street View became available with a full-screen option, on June 5,2009, Smart Navigation was introduced which allows users to navigate around the panoramas by double-clicking with their cursor on any place or object they want to see. In mid-June 2010, Google added blue dots to its maps that display user-submitted images in all locations around the world, including areas where Street View is not available. These images can be pulled up on the screen in the manner as a Street View image with the pegman by dragging it onto the blue dot. On October 30,2012, Google announced that users can contribute to Street View by creating an image from the Galaxy Nexus smartphone to share on Google Maps. On February 14,2013, Wii Street U was released for the Wii U, on June 27,2013, Google announced that users can contribute to Street View by creating a panorama-like image from the Galaxy non-Nexus smartphone to share on Google Maps. On April 23,2014, a new historical Street View option was introduced to new Google Maps, the date of panoramas can be selected from the timeline. Below is a showing the countries available on Street View

5.
Computing platform
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Computing platform means in general sense, where any piece of software is executed. It may be the hardware or the system, even a web browser or other application. The term computing platform can refer to different abstraction levels, including a hardware architecture, an operating system. In total it can be said to be the stage on which programs can run. For example, an OS may be a platform that abstracts the underlying differences in hardware, platforms may also include, Hardware alone, in the case of small embedded systems. Embedded systems can access hardware directly, without an OS, this is referred to as running on bare metal, a browser in the case of web-based software. The browser itself runs on a platform, but this is not relevant to software running within the browser. An application, such as a spreadsheet or word processor, which hosts software written in a scripting language. This can be extended to writing fully-fledged applications with the Microsoft Office suite as a platform, software frameworks that provide ready-made functionality. Cloud computing and Platform as a Service, the social networking sites Twitter and facebook are also considered development platforms. A virtual machine such as the Java virtual machine, applications are compiled into a format similar to machine code, known as bytecode, which is then executed by the VM. A virtualized version of a system, including virtualized hardware, OS, software. These allow, for instance, a typical Windows program to run on what is physically a Mac, some architectures have multiple layers, with each layer acting as a platform to the one above it. In general, a component only has to be adapted to the layer immediately beneath it, however, the JVM, the layer beneath the application, does have to be built separately for each OS

6.
Android (operating system)
–
Android is a mobile operating system developed by Google, based on the Linux kernel and designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. In addition to devices, Google has further developed Android TV for televisions, Android Auto for cars. Variants of Android are also used on notebooks, game consoles, digital cameras, beginning with the first commercial Android device in September 2008, the operating system has gone through multiple major releases, with the current version being 7.0 Nougat, released in August 2016. Android applications can be downloaded from the Google Play store, which features over 2.7 million apps as of February 2017, Android has been the best-selling OS on tablets since 2013, and runs on the vast majority of smartphones. In September 2015, Android had 1.4 billion monthly active users, Android is popular with technology companies that require a ready-made, low-cost and customizable operating system for high-tech devices. The success of Android has made it a target for patent, Android Inc. was founded in Palo Alto, California in October 2003 by Andy Rubin, Rich Miner, Nick Sears, and Chris White. Rubin described the Android project as tremendous potential in developing smarter mobile devices that are aware of its owners location. The early intentions of the company were to develop an operating system for digital cameras. Despite the past accomplishments of the founders and early employees, Android Inc. operated secretly and that same year, Rubin ran out of money. Steve Perlman, a friend of Rubin, brought him $10,000 in cash in an envelope. In July 2005, Google acquired Android Inc. for at least $50 million and its key employees, including Rubin, Miner and White, joined Google as part of the acquisition. Not much was known about Android at the time, with Rubin having only stated that they were making software for mobile phones, at Google, the team led by Rubin developed a mobile device platform powered by the Linux kernel. Google marketed the platform to handset makers and carriers on the promise of providing a flexible, upgradeable system, Google had lined up a series of hardware components and software partners and signaled to carriers that it was open to various degrees of cooperation. Speculation about Googles intention to enter the communications market continued to build through December 2006. In September 2007, InformationWeek covered an Evalueserve study reporting that Google had filed several patent applications in the area of mobile telephony, the first commercially available smartphone running Android was the HTC Dream, also known as T-Mobile G1, announced on September 23,2008. Since 2008, Android has seen numerous updates which have improved the operating system, adding new features. Each major release is named in order after a dessert or sugary treat, with the first few Android versions being called Cupcake, Donut, Eclair. In 2010, Google launched its Nexus series of devices, a lineup in which Google partnered with different device manufacturers to produce new devices and introduce new Android versions

7.
Google Maps
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Google Maps is a web mapping service developed by Google. It offers satellite imagery, street maps, 360° panoramic views of streets, real-time traffic conditions, Google maps began as a C++ desktop program designed by Lars and Jens Eilstrup Rasmussen at Where 2 Technologies. In October 2004, the company was acquired by Google, which converted it into a web application, after additional acquisitions of a geospatial data visualization company and a realtime traffic analyzer, Google Maps was launched in February 2005. The services front end utilizes JavaScript, XML, and Ajax, Google Maps offers an API that allows maps to be embedded on third-party websites, and offers a locator for urban businesses and other organizations in numerous countries around the world. Google Map Maker allows users to expand and update the services mapping worldwide. Much of the satellite imagery is no more than three years old and is updated on a regular basis. Google Maps uses a variant of the Mercator projection. The current redesigned version of the application was made available in 2013. Google Maps for mobile was released in September 2008 and features GPS turn-by-turn navigation, in August 2013, it was determined to be the worlds most popular app for smartphones, with over 54% of global smartphone owners using it at least once. In 2012, Google reported having over 7,100 employees, Google Maps provides a route planner under Get Directions. Up to four modes of transportation are available depending on the area, driving, public transit, walking, in combination with Google Street View, issues such as parking, turning lanes, and one-way streets can be viewed before traveling. China mainland, Hong Kong, Macau, Jordan, Lebanon, only public transit directions are provided for South Korea. All countries of mainland North and Central America are covered contiguously, all countries of mainland South America are covered. All countries including Trinidad and Tobago* are treated contiguously, all inhabited countries and territories in the Caribbean are covered, though in general there are no connections between islands. Like many other Google web applications, Google Maps uses JavaScript extensively, as the user drags the map, the grid squares are downloaded from the server and inserted into the page. When a user searches for a business, the results are downloaded in the background for insertion into the panel and map. Locations are drawn dynamically by positioning a red pin on top of the map images, a hidden IFrame with form submission is used because it preserves browser history. The site also uses JSON for data rather than XML

8.
Google Earth
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It maps the Earth by the superimposition of images obtained from satellite imagery, aerial photography and geographic information system onto a 3D globe. It was originally available with three different licenses, but has since reduced to just two, Google Earth and Google Earth Pro, which is now free and is intended for commercial use. The third original option, Google Earth Plus, has been discontinued. The product, re-released as Google Earth in 2005, is available for use on computers running Windows 2000 and above, Mac OS X10.3.9 and above, Linux kernel,2.6 or later. Google Earth is also available as a plugin which was released on May 28,2008. It was also available for mobile viewers on the iPhone OS on October 28,2008, as a free download from the App Store. In addition to releasing an updated Keyhole based client, Google also added the imagery from the Earth database to their web-based mapping software, as of October 2011, Google Earth has been downloaded more than a billion times. Google Earth displays satellite images of varying resolution of the Earths surface, Imagery resolution ranges from 15 meters of resolution to 15 centimeters. Most areas in Google Earth are only shown in 2D aerial imagery, Google Earth uses digital elevation model data collected by NASAs Shuttle Radar Topography Mission. This means one can view almost the entire earth in three dimensions, since November 2006, the 3D views of many mountains, including Mount Everest, have been improved by the use of supplementary DEM data to fill the gaps in SRTM coverage. Google Earth allows users to search for addresses for some countries, enter coordinates, some people use the applications to add their own data, making them available through various sources, such as the Bulletin Board Systems or blogs mentioned in the link section below. Google Earth is able to show various kinds of images overlaid on the surface of the earth and is also a Web Map Service client, Google Earth supports managing three-dimensional Geospatial data through Keyhole Markup Language. In December 2006, Google Earth added a new layer called Geographic Web that includes integration with Wikipedia, in Wikipedia, entries are scraped for coordinates via the Coord templates. There is also a community-layer from the project Wikipedia-World, More coordinates are used, different types are in the display and different languages are supported than the built-in Wikipedia layer. Google announced on May 30,2007 that it is acquiring Panoramio, in March 2010, Google removed the Geographic Web layer. The Panoramio layer became part of the layers and the Wikipedia layer was placed in the More layer. In Google Earth v4.2 a flight simulator was included as a hidden feature, starting with v4.3 it is no longer hidden. The flight simulator could be accessed by holding down the keys Ctrl, Alt, initially the F-16 Fighting Falcon and the Cirrus SR-22 were the only aircraft available, and they could be used with only a few airports

9.
Panoramic
–
A panorama is any wide-angle view or representation of a physical space, whether in painting, drawing, photography, film, seismic images or a three-dimensional model. The word was coined in the 18th century by the English painter Robert Barker to describe his panoramic paintings of Edinburgh. The motion-picture term panning is derived from panorama, a panoramic view is also purposed for multi-media, cross-scale applications to an outline overview along and across repositories. This so-called cognitive panorama is a view over, and a combination of. The device of the panorama existed in painting, particularly in murals, as early as 20 A. D. in those found in Pompeii, cartographic experiments during the Enlightenment era preceded European panorama painting and contributed to a formative impulse toward panoramic vision and depiction. In the mid-19th century, panoramic paintings and models became a popular way to represent landscapes, topographic views. Audiences of Europe in this period were thrilled by the aspect of illusion, immersed in a winding 360 degree panorama, the panorama was a 360-degree visual medium patented under the title Apparatus for Exhibiting Pictures by the artist Robert Barker in 1787. The earliest that the word appeared in print was on June 11,1791 in the British newspaper The Morning Chronicle. The inaugural exhibition, a View of Edinburgh, was first shown in that city in 1788, by 1793, Barker had built The Panorama rotunda at the center of Londons entertainment district in Leicester Square, where it remained until closed in 1863. Large scale installations enhance the illusion for an audience of being surrounded with a real landscape, the Bourbaki Panorama in Lucerne, Switzerland was created by Edouard Castres in 1881. The painting measures about 10 metres in height with a circumference of 112 meters, in the United States of America is the Atlanta Cyclorama, depicting the Civil War Battle of Atlanta. It was first displayed in 1887, and is 42 feet high by 358 feet circumference, also on a gigantic scale, and still extant, is the Racławice Panorama located in Wrocław, Poland, which measures 15 x 120 metres. In addition to historical examples, there have been panoramas painted and installed in modern times, prominent among these is the Velaslavasay Panorama in Los Angeles. Panoramic photography soon came to painting as the most common method for creating wide views. Not long after the introduction of the Daguerreotype in 1839, photographers began assembling multiple images of a view into a wide image. Pinhole cameras of a variety of constructions can be used to make panoramic images and this generates an egg-shaped image with more than 180° view. They could run autonomously with silent synchronization pulses to control projector advance and fades, precisely overlapping slides placed in slide mounts with soft-edge density masks would merge seamlessly on the screen to create the panorama. Cutting and dissolving between sequential images generated animation effects in the panorama format, digital photography of the late twentieth century greatly simplified this assembly process, which is now known as image stitching

10.
Image stitching
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Image stitching or photo stitching is the process of combining multiple photographic images with overlapping fields of view to produce a segmented panorama or high-resolution image. Some digital cameras can stitch their photos internally, Image stitching is widely used in today’s world in applications such as “Image Stabilization” feature in camcorders which use frame-rate image alignment. High resolution photo mosaics in digital maps and satellite photos, the image stitching process can be divided into three main components - image registration, calibration and blending. Possible issues with image stitching Since the illumination in two views cannot be guaranteed to be the same stitching two images could create a visible seam, other reasons for the seam appearing could be the background changing between two images for the same continuous foreground. In general the major issues to deal with are presence of parallax, lens distortion, scene motion, for panoramic stitching the ideal set of images will have a reasonable amount of overlap to overcome lens distortion and have enough detectable features. The set of images will have consistent exposure between frames to minimize the probability of seams occurring, but in the non ideal real life case the intensity varies across the whole scene and so does the contrast and intensity across the frames. Lens distortion, motion in the scene and misalignment all cause ghosting, also the ratio of width to height of panorama image needs to be taken into account to create a visually pleasing composite. General overview of image stitching algorithms Firstly algorithms are needed to determine the appropriate mathematical model relating pixel coordinates in one image to pixel coordinates in another, next, we need to estimate the correct alignments relating various pairs of images. Algorithms that combine direct pixel-to-pixel comparisons with gradient descent can be used to estimate these parameters, distinctive features can be found in each image and then efficiently matched to rapidly establish correspondences between pairs of images. When multiple images exist in a panorama, techniques have developed to compute a globally consistent set of alignments. For image stitching, we must first decide on a final compositing surface onto which to warp or projectively transform and we also need to develop algorithms to seamlessly blend the overlapping images, even in the presence of parallax, lens distortion, scene motion, and exposure differences. Keypoint detection Feature detection is necessary to automatically find correspondences between images, robust correspondences are required in order to estimate the necessary transformation to align an image with the image it is being composted on. Corners, blobs, harris corners and Difference of gaussian of harris corners are good features since they are repeatable and distinct. One of the first operators for interest point detection was developed by Hans P. Moravec in 1977 for his research involving the automatic navigation of a robot through a clustered environment. It was also Moravec who defined the concept of points of interest in an image, the Moravec operator is considered to be a corner detector because it defines interest points as points where there are large intensity variations in all directions. This often is the case at corners and it is interesting to note, however, that Moravec was not specifically interested in finding corners, just distinct regions in an image that could be used to register consecutive image frames. Harris and Stephens improved upon Moravecs corner detector by considering the differential of the score with respect to direction directly. They needed it as a step to build interpretations of a robots environment based on image sequences

11.
Tricycle
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A tricycle, often abbreviated to trike, is a human-powered three-wheeled vehicle. Some tricycles, such as cycle rickshaws and freight trikes, are used for commercial purposes, especially in the world, particularly Africa. In the West, adult-sized tricycles are used primarily for recreation, shopping, unconventional designs such as recumbents have a lower centre of gravity so require less care. A three-wheeled wheelchair was built in 1655 or 1680 by a disabled German man, Stephan Farffler, since he was a watch-maker, he was able to create a vehicle that was powered by hand cranks. In 1789, two French inventors developed a vehicle, powered by pedals, They called it the tricycle. In 1818, British inventor Denis Johnson patented his approach to designing tricycles, in 1876, James Starley developed the Coventry Lever Tricycle, which used two small wheels on the right side and a large drive wheel on the left side, power was supplied by hand levers. In 1877, Starley developed a new vehicle he called the Coventry Rotary, starleys inventions started a tricycling craze in Britain, by 1879, there were twenty types of tricycles and multi-wheel cycles. Produced in Coventry, England, and by 1884, there were over 120 different models produced by 20 manufacturers, the first front steering tricycle was manufactured in 1881 by The Leicester Safety Tricycle Company of Leicester, England, which was brought to the market in 1882 costing £18. They also developed a folding tricycle at the same time, Tricycles were used by riders who did not feel comfortable on the high wheelers, such as women who wore long, flowing dresses. In the UK, upright tricycles are sometimes referred to as barrows, many trike enthusiasts in the UK belong to the Tricycle Association, formed in 1929. They participate in day rides, tours, and time trials, massed start racing of upright tricycles is limited to one or two criteriums such as in Bungay, Suffolk, each year. A delta tricycle has one front wheel and two rear wheels, a tadpole tricycle has two front wheels and one rear wheel. Rear wheel steering is used, although this increases the turning circle. Some early pedal tricycles from the late 19th century used two wheels in tandem on one side and a driving wheel on the other. An in-line three-wheeled vehicle has two steered wheels, one at the front and the other in the middle or at the rear. Upright resembles a two-wheeled bicycle, traditionally diamond frame, or open frame, the rider straddles the frame in both delta and tadpole configurations. Steering is through a handlebar directly connected to the front wheel via a bicycle fork in delta. All non-tilting trikes have stability issues and great care must be used when riding a non tilting upright trike, the center of gravity is quite high compared to recumbent trikes

12.
Stanford University
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Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California, adjacent to Palo Alto and between San Jose and San Francisco. Its 8, 180-acre campus is one of the largest in the United States, Stanford also has land and facilities elsewhere. The university was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford in memory of their only child, Stanford was a former Governor of California and U. S. Senator, he made his fortune as a railroad tycoon. The school admitted its first students 125 years ago on October 1,1891, Stanford University struggled financially after Leland Stanfords death in 1893 and again after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Following World War II, Provost Frederick Terman supported faculty and graduates entrepreneurialism to build self-sufficient local industry in what would later be known as Silicon Valley. The university is one of the top fundraising institutions in the country. There are three schools that have both undergraduate and graduate students and another four professional schools. Students compete in 36 varsity sports, and the university is one of two institutions in the Division I FBS Pac-12 Conference. Stanford faculty and alumni have founded a number of companies that produce more than $2.7 trillion in annual revenue. It is the alma mater of 30 living billionaires,17 astronauts and it is also one of the leading producers of members of the United States Congress. Sixty Nobel laureates and seven Fields Medalists have been affiliated with Stanford as students, alumni, Stanford University was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford, dedicated to Leland Stanford Jr, their only child. The institution opened in 1891 on Stanfords previous Palo Alto farm, despite being impacted by earthquakes in both 1906 and 1989, the campus was rebuilt each time. In 1919, The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace was started by Herbert Hoover to preserve artifacts related to World War I, the Stanford Medical Center, completed in 1959, is a teaching hospital with over 800 beds. The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, which was established in 1962, in 2008, 60% of this land remained undeveloped. Besides the central campus described below, the university also operates at more remote locations, some elsewhere on the main campus. Stanfords main campus includes a place within unincorporated Santa Clara County. The campus also includes land in unincorporated San Mateo County, as well as in the city limits of Menlo Park, Woodside. The academic central campus is adjacent to Palo Alto, bounded by El Camino Real, Stanford Avenue, Junipero Serra Boulevard, the United States Postal Service has assigned it two ZIP codes,94305 for campus mail and 94309 for P. O. box mail

13.
Manhattan
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Manhattan is the most densely populated borough of New York City, its economic and administrative center, and the citys historical birthplace. The borough is coextensive with New York County, founded on November 1,1683, Manhattan is often described as the cultural and financial capital of the world and hosts the United Nations Headquarters. Many multinational media conglomerates are based in the borough and it is historically documented to have been purchased by Dutch colonists from Native Americans in 1626 for 60 guilders which equals US$1062 today. New York County is the United States second-smallest county by land area, on business days, the influx of commuters increases that number to over 3.9 million, or more than 170,000 people per square mile. Manhattan has the third-largest population of New York Citys five boroughs, after Brooklyn and Queens, the City of New York was founded at the southern tip of Manhattan, and the borough houses New York City Hall, the seat of the citys government. The name Manhattan derives from the word Manna-hata, as written in the 1609 logbook of Robert Juet, a 1610 map depicts the name as Manna-hata, twice, on both the west and east sides of the Mauritius River. The word Manhattan has been translated as island of hills from the Lenape language. The United States Postal Service prefers that mail addressed to Manhattan use New York, NY rather than Manhattan, the area that is now Manhattan was long inhabited by the Lenape Native Americans. In 1524, Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano – sailing in service of King Francis I of France – was the first European to visit the area that would become New York City. It was not until the voyage of Henry Hudson, an Englishman who worked for the Dutch East India Company, a permanent European presence in New Netherland began in 1624 with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island. In 1625, construction was started on the citadel of Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, later called New Amsterdam, the 1625 establishment of Fort Amsterdam at the southern tip of Manhattan Island is recognized as the birth of New York City. In 1846, New York historian John Romeyn Brodhead converted the figure of Fl 60 to US$23, variable-rate myth being a contradiction in terms, the purchase price remains forever frozen at twenty-four dollars, as Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace remarked in their history of New York. Sixty guilders in 1626 was valued at approximately $1,000 in 2006, based on the price of silver, Straight Dope author Cecil Adams calculated an equivalent of $72 in 1992. In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant was appointed as the last Dutch Director General of the colony, New Amsterdam was formally incorporated as a city on February 2,1653. In 1664, the English conquered New Netherland and renamed it New York after the English Duke of York and Albany, the Dutch Republic regained it in August 1673 with a fleet of 21 ships, renaming the city New Orange. Manhattan was at the heart of the New York Campaign, a series of battles in the early American Revolutionary War. The Continental Army was forced to abandon Manhattan after the Battle of Fort Washington on November 16,1776. The city, greatly damaged by the Great Fire of New York during the campaign, became the British political, British occupation lasted until November 25,1783, when George Washington returned to Manhattan, as the last British forces left the city

14.
IPhone
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IPhone is a line of smartphones designed and marketed by Apple Inc. They run Apples iOS mobile operating system, the first generation iPhone was released on June 29,2007, the most recent iPhone model is the iPhone 7, which was unveiled at a special event on September 7,2016. The user interface is built around the devices multi-touch screen, including a virtual keyboard, the iPhone has Wi-Fi and can connect to cellular networks. Other functionality, such as games, reference works, and social networking. As of January 2017, Apples App Store contained more than 2.2 million applications available for the iPhone, Apple has released ten generations of iPhone models, each accompanied by one of the ten major releases of the iOS operating system. The iPhone 5 featured a taller, 4-inch display and Apples newly introduced Lightning connector, in 2013, Apple released the 5S with improved hardware and a fingerprint reader, and the lower-cost 5C, a version of the 5 with colored plastic casings instead of metal. They were followed by the larger iPhone 6, with models featuring 4.7 and 5. 5-inch displays.5 mm headphone jack found on previous phones. The iPhones commercial success has been credited with reshaping the smartphone industry, the original iPhone was one of the first phones to use a design featuring a slate format with a touchscreen interface. Almost all modern smartphones have replicated this style of design, in the US, the iPhone holds the largest share of the smartphone market. As of late 2015, the iPhone had a 43. 6% market share, followed by Samsung, LG, Apple CEO Steve Jobs steered the original focus away from a tablet and towards a phone. Apple created the device during a collaboration with Cingular Wireless at the time—at an estimated development cost of US$150 million over thirty months. Apple rejected the design by committee approach that had yielded the Motorola ROKR E1, among other deficiencies, the ROKR E1s firmware limited storage to only 100 iTunes songs to avoid competing with Apples iPod nano. Jobs unveiled the iPhone to the public on January 9,2007, the passionate reaction to the launch of the iPhone resulted in sections of the media dubbing it the Jesus phone. Following this successful release in the US, the first generation iPhone was made available in the UK, France, and Germany in November 2007, on July 11,2008, Apple released the iPhone 3G in twenty-two countries, including the original six. Apple released the iPhone 3G in upwards of eighty countries and territories. Apple announced the iPhone 3GS on June 8,2009, along with plans to release it later in June, July, many would-be users objected to the iPhones cost, and 40% of users had household incomes over US$100,000. The back of the original first generation iPhone was made of aluminum with a black plastic accent, the iPhone 3G and 3GS feature a full plastic back to increase the strength of the GSM signal. The iPhone 3G was available in an 8 GB black model, the iPhone 3GS was available in both colors, regardless of storage capacity

15.
S60 (software platform)
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The S60 Platform was a software platform for smartphones that runs on the Symbian operating system. It was created by Nokia in 2001, and was first released in 2002 with the Nokia 7650 smartphone, the platform has since seen 5 updated editions. Series 60 was renamed to S60 in November 2005 and it was essentially a user interface able to access the core Symbian OS. In 2008, the Symbian Foundation was formed to consolidate all the assets of different Symbian platforms, in 2009, based on the code base of S60, the first iteration of the platform since the creation of Symbian Foundation was launched as S60 5th Edition, or Symbian^1. Subsequent iterations were named Symbian^2 and Symbian^3, the S60 software is a multivendor standard for smartphones that supports application development in Java MIDP, C++, Python and Adobe Flash. Its API was called Avkon UI, S60 consists of a suite of libraries and standard applications, such as telephony, personal information manager tools, and Helix-based multimedia players. It was intended to power fully featured modern phones with large colour screens, originally, the most distinguishing feature of S60 phones was that they allowed users to install new applications after purchase. Unlike a standard platform, however, the built-in apps are rarely upgraded by the vendor beyond bug fixes. New features are added to phones while they are being developed rather than after public release. Certain buttons are standardized, such as a key, a four way joystick or d-pad, left and right soft keys. S60 was mainly used by Nokia but has also used by a few other manufacturers, including Lenovo, LG Electronics, Panasonic, Samsung, Sendo, Siemens Mobile. In addition to the manufacturers the community includes, Software integration companies such as Sasken, Elektrobit, Teleca, Digia, Mobica, there have been four major releases of S60, Series 60, Series 60 Second Edition, S60 3rd Edition and S60 5th Edition. Each release had a version called Feature Pack, sometimes known as relay. Each runs on a different Symbian version, version 0.9 was the original and first shipped with Nokia 7650. Version 1.2 first shipped with Nokia 3600/3650 in 2003, many devices are capable of running the S60 software platform with the Symbian OS. Devices ranging from the early Nokia 7650 running S60 v0.9 on Symbian OS v6.1, in Symbian^3 the version of the revised platform is v5.2. The table lists devices carrying each version of S60 as well as the Symbian OS version on what it is based, note that new devices since Symbian^3 May be capable of upgrading to later systems, such as Symbian Anna and Symbian Belle. Therefore, you may see a device being listed in many systems, Symbian is now progressing through a period of organisational change to metamorph into an open source software platform project

16.
User interface
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The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. Examples of this concept of user interfaces include the interactive aspects of computer operating systems, hand tools, heavy machinery operator controls. The design considerations applicable when creating user interfaces are related to or involve such disciplines as ergonomics and psychology. Generally, the goal of user interface design is to produce a user interface makes it easy, efficient. This generally means that the needs to provide minimal input to achieve the desired output. Other terms for user interface are man–machine interface and when the machine in question is a computer human–computer interface, the user interface or human–machine interface is the part of the machine that handles the human–machine interaction. Membrane switches, rubber keypads and touchscreens are examples of the part of the Human Machine Interface which we can see. In complex systems, the interface is typically computerized. The term human–computer interface refers to this kind of system, in the context of computing the term typically extends as well to the software dedicated to control the physical elements used for human-computer interaction. The engineering of the interfaces is enhanced by considering ergonomics. The corresponding disciplines are human factors engineering and usability engineering, which is part of systems engineering, tools used for incorporating human factors in the interface design are developed based on knowledge of computer science, such as computer graphics, operating systems, programming languages. Nowadays, we use the graphical user interface for human–machine interface on computers. There is a difference between a user interface and an interface or a human–machine interface. A human-machine interface is typically local to one machine or piece of equipment, an operator interface is the interface method by which multiple equipment that are linked by a host control system is accessed or controlled. The system may expose several user interfaces to serve different kinds of users, for example, a computerized library database might provide two user interfaces, one for library patrons and the other for library personnel. The user interface of a system, a vehicle or an industrial installation is sometimes referred to as the human–machine interface. HMI is a modification of the original term MMI, in practice, the abbreviation MMI is still frequently used although some may claim that MMI stands for something different now. Another abbreviation is HCI, but is commonly used for human–computer interaction

17.
Android version history
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The version history of the Android mobile operating system began with the release of the Android alpha in November 5,2007. The first commercial version, Android 1.0, was released in September 2008, Android is continually developed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance, and it has seen a number of updates to its base operating system since the initial release. Versions 1.0 and 1.1 were not released under specific code names, each is in alphabetical order, with the most recent major version being Android 7.0 Nougat, released in August 2016. A version of Android KitKat exclusive to Android Wear devices was released on June 25,2014, the development of Android started in 2003 by Android, Inc. which was purchased by Google in 2005. There were at least two internal releases of the software inside Google and the OHA before the version was released. The code names Astro Boy and Bender were used internally for some pre-1.0 milestones, dan Morrill created some of the first mascot logos, but the current Android logo was designed by Irina Blok. The project manager, Ryan Gibson, conceived the confectionery-themed naming scheme that has used for the majority of the public releases. The beta was released on November 5,2007, while the development kit was released on November 12,2007. The main hardware platform for Android is the ARM architecture, with x86, unofficial Android-x86 project used to provide support for the x86 and MIPS architectures ahead of the official support. Since 2012, Android devices with Intel processors began to appear, including phones, while gaining support for 64-bit platforms, Android was first made to run on 64-bit x86 and then on ARM64. Since Android 5.0 Lollipop, 64-bit variants of all platforms are supported in addition to the 32-bit variants. Requirements for the amount of RAM for devices running Android 5.1 range from 512 MB of RAM for normal-density screens. Android 4.4 requires a 32-bit ARMv7, MIPS or x86 architecture processor, Android supports OpenGL ES1.1,2.0,3.0,3.2 and as of latest major version Vulkan. Some applications may require a certain version of the OpenGL ES

18.
Pollutant
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A pollutant is a substance or energy introduced into the environment that has undesired effects, or adversely affects the usefulness of a resource. A pollutant may cause long- or short-term damage by changing the rate of plant or animal species, or by interfering with human amenities, comfort, health. Some pollutants are biodegradable and therefore will not persist in the environment in the long term, however the degradation products of some pollutants are themselves polluting such as the products DDE and DDD produced from degradation of DDT. Pollutants, towards which the environment has little or no absorptive capacity are called stock pollutants, stock pollutants accumulate in the environment over time. The damage they cause increases as more pollutant is emitted, stock pollutants can create a burden for future generations, by passing on damage that persists well after the ‘benefits received from incurring that damage, have been forgotten. Fund pollutants are those for which the environment has some absorptive capacity, fund pollutants do not cause damage to the environment unless the emission rate exceeds the receiving environments absorptive capacity. Fund pollutants are not destroyed, but rather converted into less harmful substances and it also encompasses ecological light pollution which describes the effect of artificial light on individual organisms and on the structure of ecosystems as a whole. Pollutants can also be defined by their zones of influence, both horizontally and vertically, the horizontal zone refers to the area that is damaged by a pollutant. Local pollutants cause damage near the emission source, regional pollutants cause damage further from the emission source. The vertical zone is referred to whether the damage is ground-level or atmospheric, surface pollutants cause damage by concentrations of the pollutant accumulating near the Earths surface Global pollutants cause damage by concentrations in the atmosphere. Pollutants can cross borders and therefore international regulations are needed for their control. The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, which entered force in 2004, is an international legally binding agreement for the control of persistent organic pollutants. Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers are systems to collect and disseminate information on releases and transfers of toxic chemicals from industrial. The National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants are additional emission standards that are set by EPA for toxic air pollutants, under the Clean Water Act, EPA promulgated national standards for municipal sewage treatment plants, also called publicly owned treatment works, in the Secondary Treatment Regulation. National standards for industrial dischargers are called Effluent guidelines and New Source Performance Standards, in addition, the Act requires states to publish water quality standards for individual water bodies to provide additional protection where the national standards are insufficient. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act regulates the management, transport and disposal of solid waste, hazardous waste. A tank or piping network that has at least 10 percent of its volume underground is known as a storage tank. They often store substances such as petroleum, that are harmful to the environment should it become contaminated

19.
Nitrogen dioxide
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Nitrogen dioxide is the chemical compound with the formula NO2. It is one of nitrogen oxides. NO2 is an intermediate in the synthesis of nitric acid. At higher temperatures it is a gas that has a characteristic sharp. Nitrogen dioxide is a paramagnetic, bent molecule with C2v point group symmetry, Nitrogen dioxide is a reddish-brown gas above 70 °F with a pungent, acrid odor, becomes a yellowish-brown liquid below 70 °F, and converts to the colorless dinitrogen tetroxide below 15 °F. The bond length between the atom and the oxygen atom is 119.7 pm. This bond length is consistent with a bond order one and two. The lone electron in NO2 also means that this compound is a free radical, so the formula for nitrogen dioxide is often written as •NO2. Nitrogen dioxide typically arises via the oxidation of nitric oxide by oxygen in air,2 NO + O2 →2 NO2 Nitrogen dioxide is formed in most combustion processes using air as the oxidant. 4 HNO3 + Cu → Cu 2 +2 NO2 +2 H 2O Or finally by adding concentrated nitric acid over tin,4 HNO3 + Sn → H2O + H2SnO3 +4 NO2 NO2 is highly reactive. NO2 exists in equilibrium with the colourless gas dinitrogen tetroxide,2 NO2 ⇌ N 2O4 The equilibrium is characterized by ΔH = −57.23 kJ/mol, NO2 is favored at higher temperatures, while at lower temperatures, dinitrogen tetroxide predominates. Dinitrogen tetroxide can be obtained as a solid with melting point −11.2 °C. NO2 is paramagnetic due to its electron, while N2O4 is diamagnetic. The chemistry of nitrogen dioxide has been investigated extensively, at 150 °C, NO2 decomposes with release of oxygen via an endothermic process,2 NO2 →2 NO + O2 As suggested by the weakness of the N–O bond, NO2 is a good oxidizer. Consequently, it will combust, sometimes explosively, with many compounds, such as hydrocarbons. It hydrolyses to give nitric acid and nitrous acid,2 NO 2/N 2O4 + H 2O → HNO2 + HNO3 This reaction is one step in the Ostwald process for the production of nitric acid from ammonia. For the general public, the most prominent sources of NO2 are internal combustion engines burning fossil fuels, outdoors, NO2 can be a result of traffic from motor vehicles. Indoors, exposure arises from cigarette smoke, and butane and kerosene heaters, workers in industries where NO2 is used are also exposed and are at risk for occupational lung diseases, and NIOSH has set exposure limits and safety standards

20.
Particulates
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Atmospheric particulate matter – also known as particulate matter or particulates – are microscopic solid or liquid matter suspended in the Earths atmosphere. The term aerosol commonly refers to the mixture, as opposed to the particulate matter alone. Sources of particulate matter can be man-made or natural and they have impacts on climate and precipitation that adversely affect human health. The smaller PM2.5 were particularly deadly, with a 36% increase in lung cancer per 10 μg/m3 as it can penetrate deeper into the lungs, some particulates occur naturally, originating from volcanoes, dust storms, forest and grassland fires, living vegetation, and sea spray. Human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels in vehicles, power plants and various industrial processes, coal combustion in developing countries is the primary method for heating homes and supplying energy. The composition of aerosols and particles depends on their source, wind-blown mineral dust tends to be made of mineral oxides and other material blown from the Earths crust, this particulate is light-absorbing. In addition, sea spray aerosols may contain organic compounds, which influence their chemistry, Secondary particles derive from the oxidation of primary gases such as sulfur and nitrogen oxides into sulfuric acid and nitric acid. The gases from which they originate—may have an origin and a natural biogenic origin. In the presence of ammonia, secondary aerosols often take the form of ammonium salts and this is mainly because the presence of sulfate and nitrate causes the aerosols to increase to a size that scatters light effectively. Organic matter can be primary or secondary, the latter part deriving from the oxidation of VOCs. Organic matter influences the atmospheric radiation field by both scattering and absorption, another important aerosol type is elemental carbon, this aerosol type includes strongly light-absorbing material and is thought to yield large positive radiative forcing. Organic matter and elemental carbon together constitute the carbonaceous fraction of aerosols, Secondary organic aerosols, tiny tar balls resulting from combustion products of internal combustion engines, have been identified as a danger to health. The chemical composition of the aerosol directly affects how it interacts with solar radiation, the chemical constituents within the aerosol change the overall refractive index. The refractive index will determine how light is scattered and absorbed. The particles are hygroscopic due to the presence of sulfur, and SO2 is converted to sulfate when high humidity and this causes the reduced visibility and yellow color. Aerosol particles of natural origin tend to have a larger radius than human-produced aerosols such as particle pollution, the false-color maps in the third image on this page show where there are natural aerosols, human pollution, or a mixture of both, monthly. Most of the Southern Hemisphere is covered by ocean, where the largest source of aerosols is natural sea salt from dried sea spray. Because land is concentrated in the Northern Hemisphere, the amount of small aerosols from fires, over land, patches of large-radius aerosols appear over deserts and arid regions, most prominently, the Sahara Desert in north Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, where dust storms are common

21.
Google Cardboard
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Google Cardboard is a virtual reality platform developed by Google for use with a head mount for a smartphone. Named for its fold-out cardboard viewer, the platform is intended as a low-cost system to encourage interest, users can either build their own viewer from simple, low-cost components using specifications published by Google, or purchase a pre-manufactured one. To use the platform, users run Cardboard-compatible applications on their phone, place the phone into the back of the viewer, the platform was created by David Coz and Damien Henry, Google engineers at the Google Cultural Institute in Paris, in their 20% Innovation Time Off. It was introduced at the Google I/O2014 developers conference, where a Cardboard viewer was given away to all attendees. The Cardboard software development kit is available for the Android and iOS operating systems, through March 2017, over 10 million Cardboard viewers had shipped and over 160 million Cardboard app downloads had been made. Following the success of the Cardboard platform, Google announced an enhanced VR platform, Daydream, Google Cardboard headsets are built out of simple, low-cost components. Pre-manufactured viewers were available from third-party vendors until February 2016. Once the kit is assembled, a smartphone is inserted in the back of the device, a Google Cardboard–compatible app splits the smartphone display image into two, one for each eye, while also applying barrel distortion to each image to counter pincushion distortion from the lenses. The result is an image with a wide field of view. The first version of Cardboard could fit phones with screens up to 5.7 inches and used magnets as input buttons, after initially supporting only Android, Google announced iOS support for the Unity plugin in May 2015 at the Google I/O2015 conference. Third-party apps with Cardboard support are available on the Google Play store, in addition to native Cardboard apps, there are Google Chrome VR Experiments implemented using WebGL, phones, including Apples, that support WebGL can run Googles web experiments. A port of the Google Cardboard demonstration app to iOS was released at Google I/O2015. In March 2016, Google released VR View, an expansion of the Cardboard SDK allowing developers to embed 360-degree VR content on a web page or in an app, across desktop, Android. The Javascript and HTML code for web publishing VR content is open source and available on GitHub, Jump is an ecosystem for virtual reality film-making developed by Google. It was announced at Google I/O on May 28,2015, much as Google did with the Cardboard viewer, for Jump the company developed specifications for a circular camera array made from 16 cameras that it will release to the public. GoPro partnered with Google to build an array using their own cameras, once footage has been shot, the VR video is compiled from the individual cameras through the assembler, Jumps back-end software. The assembler uses computational photography and computer vision to recreate the scene while generating thousands of in-between viewpoints, finalized video shot through Jump can then be viewed through a stereoscopic VR mode of YouTube with a Cardboard viewer. Expeditions is a program for providing VR experiences to school classrooms through Google Cardboard viewers and it was announced at Google I/O2015, with plans to launch in fall 2015

22.
International Space Station
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The International Space Station is a space station, or a habitable artificial satellite, in low Earth orbit. Its first component launched into orbit in 1998, and the ISS is now the largest man-made body in space, the ISS consists of pressurised modules, external trusses, solar arrays, and other components. ISS components have been launched by Russian Proton and Soyuz rockets, the ISS serves as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory in which crew members conduct experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology, and other fields. The station is suited for the testing of systems and equipment required for missions to the Moon. The ISS maintains an orbit with an altitude of between 330 and 435 km by means of reboost manoeuvres using the engines of the Zvezda module or visiting spacecraft and it completes 15.54 orbits per day. The ISS is the space station to be inhabited by crews, following the Soviet and later Russian Salyut, Almaz. The station has continuously occupied for 16 years and 156 days since the arrival of Expedition 1 on 2 November 2000. This is the longest continuous presence in low Earth orbit. It has been visited by astronauts, cosmonauts and space tourists from 17 different nations, Soyuz has very limited downmass capability. The ISS programme is a joint project among five participating space agencies, NASA, Roscosmos, JAXA, ESA, the ownership and use of the space station is established by intergovernmental treaties and agreements. The station is divided two sections, the Russian Orbital Segment and the United States Orbital Segment, which is shared by many nations. As of January 2014, the American portion of ISS is being funded until 2024, Roscosmos has endorsed the continued operation of ISS through 2024 but has proposed using elements of the Russian Orbital Segment to construct a new Russian space station called OPSEK. On 28 March 2015, Russian sources announced that Roscosmos and NASA had agreed to collaborate on the development of a replacement for the current ISS. NASA later issued a statement expressing thanks for Russias interest in future co-operation in space exploration. According to the original Memorandum of Understanding between NASA and Rosaviakosmos, the International Space Station was intended to be a laboratory, observatory and factory in low Earth orbit. It was also planned to provide transportation, maintenance, and act as a base for possible future missions to the Moon, Mars. In the 2010 United States National Space Policy, the ISS was given roles of serving commercial, diplomatic. The ISS provides a platform to conduct scientific research, the ISS simplifies individual experiments by eliminating the need for separate rocket launches and research staff

23.
Artificial intelligence
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Artificial intelligence is intelligence exhibited by machines. Colloquially, the artificial intelligence is applied when a machine mimics cognitive functions that humans associate with other human minds, such as learning. As machines become increasingly capable, mental facilities once thought to require intelligence are removed from the definition, for instance, optical character recognition is no longer perceived as an example of artificial intelligence, having become a routine technology. AI research is divided into subfields that focus on specific problems or on specific approaches or on the use of a tool or towards satisfying particular applications. The central problems of AI research include reasoning, knowledge, planning, learning, natural language processing, perception, general intelligence is among the fields long-term goals. Approaches include statistical methods, computational intelligence, and traditional symbolic AI, Many tools are used in AI, including versions of search and mathematical optimization, logic, methods based on probability and economics. The AI field draws upon computer science, mathematics, psychology, linguistics, philosophy, neuroscience, the field was founded on the claim that human intelligence can be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it. Some people also consider AI a danger to humanity if it progresses unabatedly, while thought-capable artificial beings appeared as storytelling devices in antiquity, the idea of actually trying to build a machine to perform useful reasoning may have begun with Ramon Llull. With his Calculus ratiocinator, Gottfried Leibniz extended the concept of the calculating machine, since the 19th century, artificial beings are common in fiction, as in Mary Shelleys Frankenstein or Karel Čapeks R. U. R. The study of mechanical or formal reasoning began with philosophers and mathematicians in antiquity, in the 19th century, George Boole refined those ideas into propositional logic and Gottlob Frege developed a notational system for mechanical reasoning. Around the 1940s, Alan Turings theory of computation suggested that a machine, by shuffling symbols as simple as 0 and 1 and this insight, that digital computers can simulate any process of formal reasoning, is known as the Church–Turing thesis. Along with concurrent discoveries in neurology, information theory and cybernetics, the first work that is now generally recognized as AI was McCullouch and Pitts 1943 formal design for Turing-complete artificial neurons. The field of AI research was born at a conference at Dartmouth College in 1956, attendees Allen Newell, Herbert Simon, John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky and Arthur Samuel became the founders and leaders of AI research. At the conference, Newell and Simon, together with programmer J. C, shaw, presented the first true artificial intelligence program, the Logic Theorist. This spurred tremendous research in the domain, computers were winning at checkers, solving problems in algebra, proving logical theorems. By the middle of the 1960s, research in the U. S. was heavily funded by the Department of Defense and laboratories had been established around the world. AIs founders were optimistic about the future, Herbert Simon predicted, machines will be capable, within twenty years, Marvin Minsky agreed, writing, within a generation. The problem of creating artificial intelligence will substantially be solved and they failed to recognize the difficulty of some of the remaining tasks

24.
Web application
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In computing, a web application or web app is a client–server software application in which the client runs in a web browser. Common web applications include webmail, online sales, online auctions, wikis, instant messaging services. The general distinction between a dynamic web page of any kind and a web application is unclear, Web sites most likely to be referred to as web applications are those which have similar functionality to a desktop software application, or to a mobile app. HTML5 introduced explicit language support for making applications that are loaded as web pages, single-page applications are more application-like because they reject the more typical web paradigm of moving between distinct pages with different URLs. Single-page frameworks like Sencha Touch and AngularJS might be used to speed development of such a web app for a mobile platform, recently, frameworks like React Native, Flutter and Xamarin allow the development of native apps for all platforms using languages other than each standard native language. Hybrid apps embed a mobile web site inside a native app, possibly using a hybrid framework like Apache Cordova and this allows development using web technologies while also retaining certain advantages of native apps. In earlier computing models like client–server, the load for the application was shared between code on the server and code installed on each client locally. In other words, an application had its own pre-compiled client program which served as its interface and had to be separately installed on each users personal computer. In contrast, web applications use web documents written in a format such as HTML and JavaScript. Client web software updates may happen each time the web page is visited, during the session, the web browser interprets and displays the pages, and acts as the universal client for any web application. However, every significant change to the web page required a trip back to the server to refresh the entire page. In 1995 Netscape introduced a client-side scripting language called JavaScript allowing programmers to add some elements to the user interface that ran on the client side. In 1996, Macromedia introduced Flash, a vector animation player that could be added to browsers as a plug-in to embed animations on the web pages and it allowed the use of a scripting language to program interactions on the client side with no need to communicate with the server. In 1999, the web application concept was introduced in the Java language in the Servlet Specification version 2.2, in 2005, the term Ajax was coined, and applications like Gmail started to make their client sides more and more interactive. A web page script is able to contact the server for storing/retrieving data without downloading a web page. In 2011, HTML5 was finalized, which provides graphic and multimedia capabilities without the need of client side plug-ins, HTML5 also enriched the semantic content of documents. The APIs and document object model are no longer afterthoughts, but are fundamental parts of the HTML5 specification, webGL API paved the way for advanced 3D graphics based on HTML5 canvas and JavaScript language. These have significant importance in creating truly platform and browser independent rich web applications, many services have worked to combine all of these into a more familiar interface that adopts the appearance of an operating system

25.
Mobile app
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A mobile application software or mobile app is an application software designed to run on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. Some pre-installed apps can be removed by an ordinary uninstall process, where the software does not allow this, some devices can be rooted to eliminate the undesired apps. Native mobile apps often stand in contrast to desktop applications that run on desktop computers, Apps that are not preinstalled are usually available through distribution platforms called app stores. They began appearing in 2008 and are operated by the owner of the mobile operating system, such as the Apple App Store, Google Play, Windows Phone Store. Some apps are free, while others must be bought, usually, they are downloaded from the platform to a target device, but sometimes they can be downloaded to laptops or desktop computers. For apps with a price, generally a percentage, 20-30%, goes to the provider. The same app can therefore cost a different price depending on the mobile platform, the term app is a shortening of the term application software. It has become popular, and in 2010 was listed as Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society. In 2009, technology columnist David Pogue said that newer smartphones could be nicknamed app phones to distinguish them from earlier less-sophisticated smartphones, Mobile apps were originally offered for general productivity and information retrieval, including email, calendar, contacts, stock market and weather information. However, public demand and the availability of developer tools drove rapid expansion into other categories, in 2014 government regulatory agencies began trying to regulate and curate apps, particularly medical apps. Some companies offer apps as a method to deliver content with certain advantages over an official website. Usage of mobile apps has become increasingly prevalent across mobile phone users, a May 2012 comScore study reported that during the previous quarter, more mobile subscribers used apps than browsed the web on their devices,51. 1% vs.49. 8% respectively. Researchers found that usage of mobile apps strongly correlates with user context and depends on users location, Mobile apps are playing an ever-increasing role within healthcare and when designed and integrated correctly can yield many benefits. Market research firm Gartner predicted that 102 billion apps would be downloaded in 2013, by Q22015, the Google Play and Apple stores alone generated $5 billion. Developing apps for mobile devices requires considering the constraints and features of these devices, Mobile devices run on battery and have less powerful processors than personal computers and also have more features such as location detection and cameras. Developers also have to consider an array of screen sizes, hardware specifications and configurations because of intense competition in mobile software. Mobile application development requires use of specialized integrated development environments, Mobile apps are first tested within the development environment using emulators and later subjected to field testing. Emulators provide a way to test applications on mobile phones to which developers may not have physical access

26.
IOS
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IOS is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the system that presently powers many of the companys mobile devices, including the iPhone, iPad. It is the second most popular operating system globally after Android. IPad tablets are also the second most popular, by sales, originally unveiled in 2007 for the iPhone, iOS has been extended to support other Apple devices such as the iPod Touch and the iPad. As of January 2017, Apples App Store contains more than 2.2 million iOS applications,1 million of which are native for iPads and these mobile apps have collectively been downloaded more than 130 billion times. The iOS user interface is based upon direct manipulation, using multi-touch gestures, interface control elements consist of sliders, switches, and buttons. Internal accelerometers are used by applications to respond to shaking the device or rotating it in three dimensions. Apple has been praised for incorporating thorough accessibility functions into iOS, enabling users with vision. Major versions of iOS are released annually, the current version, iOS10, was released on September 13,2016. In iOS, there are four layers, the Core OS, Core Services, Media. In 2005, when Steve Jobs began planning the iPhone, he had a choice to either shrink the Mac, forstall was also responsible for creating a software development kit for programmers to build iPhone apps, as well as an App Store within iTunes. The operating system was unveiled with the iPhone at the Macworld Conference & Expo on January 9,2007, and released in June of that year. At the time of its unveiling in January, Steve Jobs claimed, iPhone runs OS X and runs applications, but at the time of the iPhones release. Initially, third-party native applications were not supported, Steve Jobs reasoning was that developers could build web applications through the Safari web browser that would behave like native apps on the iPhone. In October 2007, Apple announced that a native Software Development Kit was under development, on March 6,2008, Apple held a press event, announcing the iPhone SDK. The iOS App Store was opened on July 10,2008 with an initial 500 applications available.2 million in January 2017, as of March 2016,1 million apps are natively compatible with the iPad tablet computer. These apps have collectively been downloaded more than 130 billion times, App intelligence firm Sensor Tower has estimated that the App Store will reach 5 million apps by the year 2020. On September 5,2007, Apple released the iPod Touch, Apple also sold more than one million iPhones during the 2007 holiday season

27.
Adobe Flash
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Adobe Flash is a multimedia software platform used for production of animations, rich Internet applications, desktop applications, mobile applications and mobile games. Flash displays text, vector graphics and raster graphics to provide animations, video games and it allows streaming of audio and video, and can capture mouse, keyboard, microphone and camera input. Artists may produce Flash graphics and animations using Adobe Animate, Software developers may produce applications and video games using Adobe Flash Builder, FlashDevelop, Flash Catalyst, or any text editor when used with the Apache Flex SDK. End-users can view Flash content via Flash Player, AIR or third-party players such as Scaleform, Adobe Flash Player enables end-users to view Flash content using web browsers. Adobe Flash Lite enabled viewing Flash content on older smartphones, but has discontinued and superseded by Adobe AIR. The ActionScript programming language allows the development of interactive animations, video games, web applications, desktop applications, programmers can implement Flash software using an IDE such as Adobe Animate, Adobe Flash Builder, Adobe Director, FlashDevelop and Powerflasher FDT. Adobe AIR enables full-featured desktop and mobile applications to be developed with Flash, and published for Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Wii U. Content-providers frequently used to use Flash to display streaming video, advertising and interactive content on web pages. However, after the 2000s, the usage of Flash on Web sites declined, in the early 2000s, Flash was widely installed on desktop computers, and was commonly used to display interactive web pages, online games, and to playback video and audio content. In 2005, YouTube was founded by former PayPal employees, between 2000 and 2010, numerous businesses used Flash-based websites to launch new products, or to create interactive company portals. Notable users include Nike, Hewlett-Packard, Nokia, General Electric, World Wildlife Fund, HBO, Cartoon Network, after Adobe introduced hardware-accelerated 3D for Flash, Flash websites saw a growth of 3D content for product demonstrations and virtual tours. In 2007, YouTube offered videos in HTML5 format to support the iPhone and iPad, after a controversy with Apple, Adobe stopped developing Flash Player for Mobile, focussing its efforts on Adobe AIR applications and HTML5 animation. In 2015, Google introduced Google Swiffy to convert Flash animation to HTML5, in 2015, YouTube switched to HTML5 technology on all devices, however it will preserve the Flash-based video player for older web browsers. After Flash 5 introduced ActionScript in 2000, developers combined the visual and programming capabilities of Flash to produce interactive experiences, such Web-based applications eventually came to be known as Rich Internet Applications. In 2004, Macromedia Flex was released, and specifically targeted the application development market, Flex introduced new user interface components, advanced data visualization components, data remoting, and a modern IDE. Flex competed with Asynchronous JavaScript and XML and Microsoft Silverlight during its tenure, Flex was upgraded to support integration with remote data sources, using AMF, BlazeDS, Adobe LiveCycle, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, and others. As of 2015, Flex applications can be published for desktop platforms using Adobe AIR, between 2006 and 2016, the Speedtest. net web service conducted over 9.0 billion speed tests using an RIA built with Adobe Flash. In 2016, the service shifted to HTML5 due to the availability of Adobe Flash Player on PCs

28.
JavaScript
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JavaScript is a high-level, dynamic, untyped, and interpreted programming language. It has been standardized in the ECMAScript language specification, JavaScript is prototype-based with first-class functions, making it a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles. JavaScript was influenced by programming languages such as Self and Scheme, JavaScript is also used in environments that are not Web-based, such as PDF documents, site-specific browsers, and desktop widgets. Newer and faster JavaScript virtual machines and platforms built upon them have increased the popularity of JavaScript for server-side Web applications. On the client side, developers have traditionally implemented JavaScript as an interpreted language, programmers also use JavaScript in video-game development, in crafting desktop and mobile applications, and in server-side network programming with run-time environments such as Node. js. In 1994, a company called Mosaic Communications was founded in Mountain View, California, however, it intentionally shared no code with NCSA Mosaic. The internal codename for the browser was Mozilla, which stood for Mosaic killer. The first version of the Web browser, Mosaic Netscape 0.9, was released in late 1994, within four months it had already taken three-quarters of the browser market and became the main browser for Internet in the 1990s. To avoid trademark problems with the NCSA, the browser was subsequently renamed Netscape Navigator in the same year. Netscape Communications realized that the Web needed to more dynamic. In 1995, the company recruited Brendan Eich with the goal of embedding the Scheme programming language into its Netscape Navigator, to defend the idea of JavaScript against competing proposals, the company needed a prototype. Eich wrote one in 10 days, in May 1995, there is a common misconception that JavaScript was influenced by an earlier Web page scripting language developed by Nombas named C--. Brendan Eich, however, had never heard of C-- before he created LiveScript, Nombas did pitch their embedded Web page scripting to Netscape, though Web page scripting was not a new concept, as shown by the ViolaWWW Web browser. Nombas later switched to offering JavaScript instead of C-- in their ScriptEase product and was part of the TC39 group that standardized ECMAScript, in December 1995, soon after releasing JavaScript for browsers, Netscape introduced an implementation of the language for server-side scripting with Netscape Enterprise Server. Since the mid-2000s, additional server-side JavaScript implementations have been introduced, Microsoft script technologies including VBScript and JScript were released in 1996. JScript, an implementation of Netscapes JavaScript, was part of Internet Explorer 3. JScript was also available for server-side scripting in Internet Information Server, JavaScript began to acquire a reputation for being one of the roadblocks to a cross-platform and standards-driven Web. Some developers took on the task of trying to make their sites work in both major browsers, but many could not afford the time

29.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange

30.
FLIR Systems
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FLIR Systems is the worlds largest commercial company specializing in the design and production of thermal imaging cameras, components and imaging sensors. Based in Wilsonville, Oregon, United States, and founded in 1978, the company makes thermal cameras and components for a wide variety of commercial and government applications. FLIR is a component of the S&P500 index with annual revenues in excess of $1.5 billion annually as of 2014, in the spring of 2013, Andrew C. Teich became FLIRs chief executive officer and president after the retirement of Earl Lewis. FLIR took its name from the acronym for forward-looking Infrared, the company began in 1978 with airborne IR systems, and developed from 1978 to 2004 through product development and acquisitions of related companies. Originally based in Tigard, Oregon, the relocated to Portland in the mid-1990s. FLIR teamed up with Hughes Aircraft Company in 1990, with Hughes taking part ownership of FLIR, the company became publicly traded in a June 1993 IPO which raised $11.5 million for the company with shares offered at $12.50. In 1994, the company had grown to sales of $47 million annually, the next year, J. Kenneth Stringer III was named as president of the company. The company bought Swedens Agema Infrared System in 1997, which doubled the size of the company, acquisitions continued the following year when they purchased Inframetrics Inc. of Massachusetts for $48 million. The companys president and chief executive officer Kenneth Stringer III was fired by the board of directors in May 2000 due to errors in the accounting practices. In September 2002, the Securities and Exchange Commission sued FLIR over accounting irregularities, the next year, three executives at the company were charged with fraudulent accounting related to the SEC case that included claims of inflated sales. Sales at FLIR grew to $311 million in fiscal year 2003, in 2004, the company bought a building in Wilsonville from Mentor Graphics for $10.3 million for use as a new headquarters. Beginning in 2005, the company began supplying BMW with imaging technology for use on the luxury automakers vehicles, also in 2005, FLIR was named the 55th fastest-growing company on CNNMoneys list of the 100 fastest-growing tech companies. In 2006, FLIR was listed as the 83rd best small business by Forbes, the previous year they were ranked 39th. That July, FLIR announced a contract worth up to $250 million with the United States Army for cameras to be installed on helicopters. FLIR was also sued by investors over these same allegations, the company purchased Extech Instruments Corp. in October 2007 for $40 million. The next month FLIR executed its third stock split, FLIR made another acquisition in April 2008 when it purchased Ifara Tecnologias of Spain for about $11 million. For the 2008 fiscal year, the company recorded $1.1 billion in sales, on January 1,2009, FLIR was added to the S&P500 stock index, replacing National City Corporation. FLIR was named as the Northwests top company by the Seattle Times in 2009 and it sold Extech Data Systems, a division of Extech which made portable printers, in December 2009, and bought the security hardware maker Directed Perception that month for $20 million

31.
Shutter (photography)
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A shutter can also be used to allow pulses of light to pass outwards, as seen in a movie projector or a signal lamp. A shutter of variable speed is used to control exposure time of the film, the shutter is so constructed that it automatically closes after a certain required time interval. The speed of the shutter is controlled by a ring outside the camera, focal-plane shutters are mounted near the focal plane and move to uncover the film or sensor. Behind-the-lens shutters were used in cameras with limited lens interchangeability. Shutters in front of the lens, sometimes simply a lens cap that is removed and replaced for the long exposures required, were used in the days of photography. Other mechanisms than the aperture and the sliding curtains have been used. The time for which a shutter remains open is determined by a timing mechanism and these were originally pneumatic or clockwork, but since the late twentieth century are mostly electronic. The reciprocal of time in seconds is often used for engraving shutter settings. For example, a marking of 250 denotes 1/250 and this does not cause confusion in practice. The exposure time and the aperture of the lens must together be such as to allow the right amount of light to reach the film or sensor. Additionally, the time must be suitable to handle any motion of the subject. Usually it must be fast enough to freeze rapid motion, unless a controlled degree of motion blur is desired, most shutters have a flash synchronization switch to trigger a flash, if connected. This was quite a complicated matter with mechanical shutters and flashbulbs which took a time to reach full brightness. Special flashbulbs were designed which had a burn, illuminating the scene for the whole time taken by a focal plane shutter slit to move across the film. These problems were solved for non-focal-plane shutters with the advent of electronic flash units which fire virtually instantaneously. When using a focal-plane shutter with a flash, if the shutter is set at its X-sync speed or slower the whole frame will be exposed when the flash fires, some electronic flashes can produce a longer pulse compatible with a focal-plane shutter operated at much higher shutter speeds. The focal-plane shutter will still impart focal-plane shutter distortions to a moving subject. Cinematography uses a rotary shutter in movie cameras, a continuously spinning disc which conceals the image with a reflex mirror during the intermittent motion between frame exposure

32.
Active pixel sensor
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An active-pixel sensor is an image sensor consisting of an integrated circuit containing an array of pixel sensors, each pixel containing a photodetector and an active amplifier. Such an image sensor is produced using CMOS technology, and has emerged as an alternative to charge-coupled device image sensors. The term active pixel sensor was coined in 1985 by Tsutomu Nakamura who worked on the Charge Modulation Device active pixel sensor at Olympus, the MOS passive-pixel sensor used just a simple switch in the pixel to read out the photodiode integrated charge. Pixels were arrayed in a structure, with an access enable wire shared by pixels in the same row. At the end of each column was an amplifier, passive-pixel sensors suffered from many limitations, such as high noise, slow readout, and lack of scalability. The addition of an amplifier to each pixel addressed these problems, Noble in 1968 and Chamberlain in 1969 created sensor arrays with active MOS readout amplifiers per pixel, in essentially the modern three-transistor configuration. The CCD was invented in October 1969 at Bell Labs, a low-resolution mostly digital N-channel MOSFET imager with intra-pixel amplification, for an optical mouse application, was demonstrated in 1981. Another type of active pixel sensor is the infrared focal plane array designed to operate at cryogenic temperatures in the infrared spectrum. The exact date of origin of these devices is classified, by the late 1980s and early 1990s, the CMOS process was well established as a well controlled stable process and was the baseline process for almost all logic and microprocessors. Between 1993 and 1995, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory developed a number of prototype devices, though primitive, these devices demonstrated good image performance with high readout speed and low power consumption. In 1995, personnel from JPL founded Photobit Corp, many other small image sensor companies also sprang to life shortly thereafter due to the accessibility of the CMOS process and all quickly adopted the active pixel sensor approach. Most recent, the CMOS sensor technology has spread to medium-format photography with Phase One being the first to launch a medium format digital back with a Sony-built CMOS sensor, APS pixels solve the speed and scalability issues of the passive-pixel sensor. They generally consume less power than CCDs, have less image lag, unlike CCDs, APS sensors can combine the image sensor function and image processing functions within the same integrated circuit. APS sensors have found markets in many applications, especially camera phones. They have also used in other fields including digital radiography, military ultra high speed image acquisition, security cameras. Manufacturers include Aptina Imaging, Canon, Samsung, STMicroelectronics, Toshiba, OmniVision Technologies, Sony, cMOS-type APS sensors are typically suited to applications in which packaging, power management, and on-chip processing are important. CMOS type sensors are used, from high-end digital photography down to mobile-phone cameras. A big advantage of a CMOS sensor is that it is less expensive than a CCD sensor

33.
Rolling shutter
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In other words, not all parts of the image of the scene are recorded at exactly the same instant. This produces predictable distortions of fast-moving objects or rapid flashes of light and this is in contrast with global shutter in which the entire frame is captured at the same instant. The rolling shutter can be mechanical or electronic. The advantage of this method is that the sensor can continue to gather photons during the acquisition process. It is found on many digital still and video cameras using CMOS sensors, the effect is most noticeable when imaging extreme conditions of motion or the fast flashing of light. While some CMOS sensors use a shutter, the majority found in the consumer market use a rolling shutter. CCDs are alternatives to CMOS sensors, which are more sensitive. CCD-based cameras often use global shutters, which take a snapshot representing a single instant in time, rolling shutters can cause such effects as, Wobble. This phenomenon appears when the camera is vibrating, in such as hand-held shots at telephoto settings. The rolling shutter causes the image to wobble unnaturally, the image bends diagonally in one direction or another as the camera or subject moves from one side to another, exposing different parts of the image at different times. Skew is a manifestation of the wobble phenomenon described above. This effect can be viewed with a cell phone camera and something rotating quickly. The smear of each blade is caused by the propeller rotating at the same or near the speed that the frame is read by the camera. If a camera flash goes on for only part of the time of the exposure, the illumination of the flash may only be present for some rows of pixels in a given frame. For example, the top 1/3 of the picture may be lit by a flash, while the bottom 2/3 of the picture is dark and unlit. The difference between the two parts of the frame can look odd. The effects of a rolling shutter can prove difficult for visual effects filming

34.
Charge-coupled device
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A charge-coupled device is a device for the movement of electrical charge, usually from within the device to an area where the charge can be manipulated, for example conversion into a digital value. This is achieved by shifting the signals between stages within the one at a time. CCDs move charge between capacitive bins in the device, with the shift allowing for the transfer of charge between bins, in recent years CCD has become a major technology for digital imaging. In a CCD image sensor, pixels are represented by p-doped metal-oxide-semiconductors capacitors, the charge-coupled device was invented in 1969 at AT&T Bell Labs by Willard Boyle and George E. Smith. The lab was working on bubble memory when Boyle and Smith conceived of the design of what they termed, in their notebook. The device could be used as a shift register, the essence of the design was the ability to transfer charge along the surface of a semiconductor from one storage capacitor to the next. The concept was similar in principle to the device, which was developed at Philips Research Labs during the late 1960s. The first patent on the application of CCDs to imaging was assigned to Michael Tompsett, the initial paper describing the concept listed possible uses as a memory, a delay line, and an imaging device. The first experimental device demonstrating the principle was a row of closely spaced metal squares on a silicon surface electrically accessed by wire bonds. The first working CCD made with integrated circuit technology was a simple 8-bit shift register and this device had input and output circuits and was used to demonstrate its use as a shift register and as a crude eight pixel linear imaging device. Development of the device progressed at a rapid rate, by 1971, Bell researchers led by Michael Tompsett were able to capture images with simple linear devices. Several companies, including Fairchild Semiconductor, RCA and Texas Instruments, picked up on the invention, fairchilds effort, led by ex-Bell researcher Gil Amelio, was the first with commercial devices, and by 1974 had a linear 500-element device and a 2-D100 x 100 pixel device. Steven Sasson, an engineer working for Kodak, invented the first digital still camera using a Fairchild 100 x 100 CCD in 1975. The first KH-11 KENNAN reconnaissance satellite equipped with charge-coupled device array technology for imaging was launched in December 1976, under the leadership of Kazuo Iwama, Sony also started a large development effort on CCDs involving a significant investment. Eventually, Sony managed to mass-produce CCDs for their camcorders, before this happened, Iwama died in August 1982, subsequently, a CCD chip was placed on his tombstone to acknowledge his contribution. He was also awarded the 2012 IEEE Edison Medal For pioneering contributions to imaging devices including CCD Imagers, cameras, in a CCD for capturing images, there is a photoactive region, and a transmission region made out of a shift register. An image is projected through a lens onto the capacitor array, once the array has been exposed to the image, a control circuit causes each capacitor to transfer its contents to its neighbor. The last capacitor in the array dumps its charge into a charge amplifier, by repeating this process, the controlling circuit converts the entire contents of the array in the semiconductor to a sequence of voltages

35.
Wide-angle lens
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In photography and cinematography, a wide-angle lens refers to a lens whose focal length is substantially smaller than the focal length of a normal lens for a given film plane. This exaggeration of size can be used to make foreground objects more prominent and striking. A wide angle lens is one that projects a substantially larger image circle than would be typical for a standard design lens of the same focal length. This large image circle enables either large tilt & shift movements with a view camera, by convention, in still photography, the normal lens for a particular format has a focal length approximately equal to the length of the diagonal of the image frame or digital photosensor. In cinematography, a lens of twice the diagonal is considered normal. A lens is considered wide-angle when it covers the angle of view between 64° and 84° which in return translates to 35–24mm lens in 35mm film format, longer lenses magnify the subject more, apparently compressing distance and blurring the background because of their shallower depth of field. Wider lenses tend to distance between objects while allowing greater depth of field. For a full-frame 35 mm camera with a 36 mm by 24 mm format, the diagonal measures 43.3 mm and by custom, also by custom, a lens of focal length 35 mm or less is considered wide-angle. Ultra wide angle lenses have a length shorter than the short side of the film or sensor. In 35 mm, an ultra wide-angle lens has a length shorter than 24 mm. Common wide-angle for a full-frame 35 mm camera are 35,28,24,21,20,18 and 14 mm, the latter four being ultra-wide. Many of the lenses in this range will produce a more or less rectilinear image at the film plane, Ultra wide-angle lenses that do not produce a rectilinear image are called fisheye lenses. Common focal lengths for these in a 35 mm camera are 6 to 8 mm. Lenses with focal lengths of 8 to 16 mm may be either rectilinear or fisheye designs, Wide-angle lenses come in both fixed-focal-length and zoom varieties. For 35 mm cameras, lenses producing rectilinear images can be found at lengths as short as 8 mm. As of 2015, many digital cameras have image sensors that are smaller than the film format of full-frame 35 mm cameras. The camera manufacturers provide a crop factor to show how much smaller the sensor is than a full 35 mm film frame, for example, one common factor is 1.5, although many cameras have crop factors of 1.6,1.7 and 2. As example, a 28 mm lens on the DSLR would produce the angle of view of a 42 mm lens on a full-frame camera. For example, to get the equivalent angle of view of a 30 mm lens on a full-frame 35 mm camera, from a camera with a 1.5 crop factor

36.
Google Books
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Books are provided either by publishers and authors, through the Google Books Partner Program, or by Googles library partners, through the Library Project. Additionally, Google has partnered with a number of publishers to digitize their archives. The Publisher Program was first known as Google Print when it was introduced at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2004, the Google Books Library Project, which scans works in the collections of library partners and adds them to the digital inventory, was announced in December 2004. But it has also criticized for potential copyright violations. As of October 2015, the number of scanned book titles was over 25 million, Google estimated in 2010 that there were about 130 million distinct titles in the world, and stated that it intended to scan all of them. Results from Google Books show up in both the universal Google Search as well as in the dedicated Google Books search website, if Google believes the book is still under copyright, a user sees snippets of text around the queried search terms. All instances of the terms in the book text appear with a yellow highlight. The four access levels used on Google Books are, Full view, Books in the domain are available for full view. In-print books acquired through the Partner Program are also available for full view if the publisher has given permission, usually, the publisher can set the percentage of the book available for preview. Users are restricted from copying, downloading or printing book previews, a watermark reading Copyrighted material appears at the bottom of pages. All books acquired through the Partner Program are available for preview and this could be because Google cannot identify the owner or the owner declined permission. If a search term appears many times in a book, Google displays no more than three snippets, thus preventing the user from viewing too much of the book. Also, Google does not display any snippets for certain reference books, such as dictionaries, Google maintains that no permission is required under copyright law to display the snippet view. No preview, Google also displays search results for books that have not been digitized, in effect, this is similar to an online library card catalog. Google also stated that it would not scan any in-copyright books between August and 1 November 2005, to provide the owners with the opportunity to decide which books to exclude from the Project. It can let Google scan the book under the Library Project and it can opt out of the Library Project, in which case Google will not scan the book. If the book has already been scanned, Google will reset its access level as No preview and this information is collated through automated methods, and sometimes data from third-party sources is used. This information provides an insight into the book, particularly useful when only a view is available

37.
Pixel
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The address of a pixel corresponds to its physical coordinates. LCD pixels are manufactured in a grid, and are often represented using dots or squares. Each pixel is a sample of an image, more samples typically provide more accurate representations of the original. The intensity of each pixel is variable, in color imaging systems, a color is typically represented by three or four component intensities such as red, green, and blue, or cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. The word pixel is based on a contraction of pix and el, the word pixel was first published in 1965 by Frederic C. Billingsley of JPL, to describe the elements of video images from space probes to the Moon. Billingsley had learned the word from Keith E. McFarland, at the Link Division of General Precision in Palo Alto, McFarland said simply it was in use at the time. The word is a combination of pix, for picture, the word pix appeared in Variety magazine headlines in 1932, as an abbreviation for the word pictures, in reference to movies. By 1938, pix was being used in reference to pictures by photojournalists. The concept of a picture element dates to the earliest days of television, some authors explain pixel as picture cell, as early as 1972. In graphics and in image and video processing, pel is often used instead of pixel, for example, IBM used it in their Technical Reference for the original PC. A pixel is generally thought of as the smallest single component of a digital image, however, the definition is highly context-sensitive. For example, there can be printed pixels in a page, or pixels carried by electronic signals, or represented by digital values, or pixels on a display device, or pixels in a digital camera. This list is not exhaustive and, depending on context, synonyms include pel, sample, byte, bit, dot, Pixels can be used as a unit of measure such as,2400 pixels per inch,640 pixels per line, or spaced 10 pixels apart. For example, a high-quality photographic image may be printed with 600 ppi on a 1200 dpi inkjet printer, even higher dpi numbers, such as the 4800 dpi quoted by printer manufacturers since 2002, do not mean much in terms of achievable resolution. The more pixels used to represent an image, the closer the result can resemble the original, the number of pixels in an image is sometimes called the resolution, though resolution has a more specific definition.3 megapixels. The pixels, or color samples, that form an image may or may not be in one-to-one correspondence with screen pixels. In computing, a composed of pixels is known as a bitmapped image or a raster image

38.
CMOS
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Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor, abbreviated as CMOS /ˈsiːmɒs/, is a technology for constructing integrated circuits. CMOS technology is used in microprocessors, microcontrollers, static RAM, CMOS technology is also used for several analog circuits such as image sensors, data converters, and highly integrated transceivers for many types of communication. In 1963, while working for Fairchild Semiconductor, Frank Wanlass patented CMOS, CMOS is also sometimes referred to as complementary-symmetry metal–oxide–semiconductor. Two important characteristics of CMOS devices are high noise immunity and low power consumption. Since one transistor of the pair is always off, the series combination draws significant power only momentarily during switching between on and off states, CMOS also allows a high density of logic functions on a chip. It was primarily for this reason that CMOS became the most used technology to be implemented in VLSI chips, aluminium was once used but now the material is polysilicon. Other metal gates have made a comeback with the advent of high-k dielectric materials in the CMOS process, as announced by IBM and Intel for the 45 nanometer node and beyond. CMOS refers to both a style of digital circuitry design and the family of processes used to implement that circuitry on integrated circuits. CMOS circuitry dissipates less power than logic families with resistive loads, since this advantage has increased and grown more important, CMOS processes and variants have come to dominate, thus the vast majority of modern integrated circuit manufacturing is on CMOS processes. As of 2010, CPUs with the best performance per watt each year have been CMOS static logic since 1976, CMOS circuits use a combination of p-type and n-type metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor to implement logic gates and other digital circuits. CMOS always uses all enhancement-mode MOSFETs, CMOS circuits are constructed in such a way that all PMOS transistors must have either an input from the voltage source or from another PMOS transistor. Similarly, all NMOS transistors must have either an input from ground or from another NMOS transistor, the composition of a PMOS transistor creates low resistance between its source and drain contacts when a low gate voltage is applied and high resistance when a high gate voltage is applied. On the other hand, the composition of an NMOS transistor creates high resistance between source and drain when a low voltage is applied and low resistance when a high gate voltage is applied. CMOS accomplishes current reduction by complementing every nMOSFET with a pMOSFET, a high voltage on the gates will cause the nMOSFET to conduct and the pMOSFET to not conduct, while a low voltage on the gates causes the reverse. This arrangement greatly reduces power consumption and heat generation, however, during the switching time, both MOSFETs conduct briefly as the gate voltage goes from one state to another. This induces a brief spike in consumption and becomes a serious issue at high frequencies. The image on the right shows what happens when an input is connected to both a PMOS transistor and an NMOS transistor, when the voltage of input A is low, the NMOS transistors channel is in a high resistance state. This limits the current that can flow from Q to ground, the PMOS transistors channel is in a low resistance state and much more current can flow from the supply to the output

39.
Elphel
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Elphel, Inc. designs and manufactures open hardware and free software cameras primarily for scientific applications, though these products can easily be customised for many different uses. Elphel Inc. was founded in 2001 by Russian physicist Andrey Filippov who emigrated to the United States of America in 1995, the current model is named Elphel 393. On the 6th December,2010 Elphel launched their first panoramic camera solution called Elphel Eyesis, the Franken camera F2 developed by Stanford University uses the Elphel 10383 sensor front-end. The camera was used in the Apertus Project by a group of enthusiasts, AXIOM, an open source hardware 4K digital cinema camera Elphel official website Elphel development blog Elphel wiki

40.
Lens flare
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Lens flare refers to a phenomenon wherein light is scattered or flared in a lens system, often in response to a bright light, producing a desirable effect on the image. This happens through unintentional image formation mechanisms, such as internal reflection, lenses with large numbers of elements such as zooms tend to exhibit greater lens flare, as they contain multiple surfaces at which unwanted internal scattering occurs. These mechanisms differ from the image formation mechanism, which depends on rays from the refraction of the image itself. Flare manifests itself in two ways, as visible artifacts, and as a haze across the image, the haze makes the image look washed out by reducing contrast and color saturation. Visible artifacts, usually in the shape of the iris, are formed when light follows a pathway through the lens that contains one or more reflections from the lens surfaces. Flare is particularly caused by bright light sources. Most commonly, this occurs when shooting into the sun, and is reduced by using a hood or other shade. For good-quality optical systems, and for most images, flare is an effect that is widely distributed across the image and thus not visible. The spatial distribution of the lens flare typically manifests as several starbursts, rings, the specific spatial distribution of the flare depends on the shape of the aperture of the image formation elements. For example, if the lens has a 6-bladed aperture, the flare may have a hexagonal pattern, such internal scattering is also present in the human eye, and manifests in an unwanted veiling glare most obvious when viewing very bright lights or highly reflective surfaces. In some situations, eyelashes can also create flare-like irregularities, although these are technically diffraction artifacts, when a bright light source is shining on the lens but not in its field of view, lens flare appears as a haze that washes out the image and reduces contrast. This can be avoided by shading the lens using a lens hoods, in a studio, a gobo or set of barn doors can be attached to the lighting to keep it from shining on the camera. Filters can be attached to the lens which will also minimise lens flare. When using a lens, as is common in analog cinematography. This is most commonly seen in car headlights in a dark scene, a lens flare is often deliberately used to invoke a sense of drama. For both of these reasons artificial lens flare is an effect in various graphics editing programs. Lens flare was one of the first special effects developed for computer graphics because it can be imitated using relatively simple means, more sophisticated rendering techniques have been developed based on ray tracing or photon mapping. S. Costume designer Rita Riggs purposefully would sometimes dress Bea Arthur in Maude in a red that would flare to make a statement, director J. J. Abrams added numerous lens flares to the 2009 film Star Trek by aiming powerful off-camera light sources at the lens

41.
Fisheye lens
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A fisheye lens is an ultra wide-angle lens that produces strong visual distortion intended to create a wide panoramic or hemispherical image. The term fisheye was coined in 1906 by American physicist and inventor Robert W. Wood based on how a fish would see an ultrawide hemispherical view from beneath the water. Their first practical use was in the 1920s for use in meteorology to study cloud formation giving them the name whole-sky lenses, the angle of view of a fisheye lens is usually between 100 and 180 degrees while the focal lengths depend on the film format they are designed for. Mass-produced fisheye lenses for photography first appeared in the early 1960s and are used for their unique. For the popular 35 mm film format, typical lengths of fisheye lenses are between 8 mm and 10 mm for circular images, and 15–16 mm for full-frame images. For digital cameras using smaller electronic imagers such as 6.4 mm and 8.5 mm format CCD or CMOS sensors, the focal length of miniature fisheye lenses can be as short as 1 to 2 mm. These types of lenses also have other applications such as re-projecting images filmed through a lens, or created via computer generated graphics. Fisheye lenses are used for scientific photography such as recording of aurora and meteors. They are also used as peephole door viewers to give the user a wide field of view. In a circular lens, the image circle is inscribed in the film or sensor area. Further, different fisheye lenses distort images differently, and the manner of distortion is referred to as their mapping function, a common type for consumer use is equisolid angle. Although there are digital fisheye effects available both in-camera and as computer software they cant extend the angle of view of the images to the very large one of a true fisheye lens. The first types of lenses to be developed were circular fisheye — lenses which took in a 180° hemisphere. Some circular fisheyes were available in orthographic projection models for scientific applications and these have a 180° vertical angle of view, and the horizontal and diagonal angle of view are also 180°. Most circular fisheye lenses cover a smaller circle than rectilinear lenses. The first full-frame fisheye lens to be mass-produced was a 16 mm lens made by Nikon in the early 1970s, Digital cameras with APS-C sized sensors require a 10.5 mm lens to get the same effect as a 16 mm lens on a camera with full-frame sensor. Sigma currently makes a 4. 5mm fisheye lens that captures a 180-degree field of view on a crop body, sunex also makes a 5. 6mm fisheye lens that captures a circular 185-degree field of view on a 1. 5x Nikon and 1. 6x Canon DSLR cameras. Nikon produced a 6 mm circular fisheye lens that was designed for an expedition to Antarctica

42.
Global Positioning System
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The Global Positioning System is a space-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Air Force. The GPS system operates independently of any telephonic or internet reception, the GPS system provides critical positioning capabilities to military, civil, and commercial users around the world. The United States government created the system, maintains it, however, the US government can selectively deny access to the system, as happened to the Indian military in 1999 during the Kargil War. The U. S. Department of Defense developed the system and it became fully operational in 1995. Roger L. Easton of the Naval Research Laboratory, Ivan A, getting of The Aerospace Corporation, and Bradford Parkinson of the Applied Physics Laboratory are credited with inventing it. Announcements from Vice President Al Gore and the White House in 1998 initiated these changes, in 2000, the U. S. Congress authorized the modernization effort, GPS III. In addition to GPS, other systems are in use or under development, mainly because of a denial of access. The Russian Global Navigation Satellite System was developed contemporaneously with GPS, GLONASS can be added to GPS devices, making more satellites available and enabling positions to be fixed more quickly and accurately, to within two meters. There are also the European Union Galileo positioning system and Chinas BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, special and general relativity predict that the clocks on the GPS satellites would be seen by the Earths observers to run 38 microseconds faster per day than the clocks on the Earth. The GPS calculated positions would quickly drift into error, accumulating to 10 kilometers per day, the relativistic time effect of the GPS clocks running faster than the clocks on earth was corrected for in the design of GPS. The Soviet Union launched the first man-made satellite, Sputnik 1, two American physicists, William Guier and George Weiffenbach, at Johns Hopkinss Applied Physics Laboratory, decided to monitor Sputniks radio transmissions. Within hours they realized that, because of the Doppler effect, the Director of the APL gave them access to their UNIVAC to do the heavy calculations required. The next spring, Frank McClure, the deputy director of the APL, asked Guier and Weiffenbach to investigate the inverse problem — pinpointing the users location and this led them and APL to develop the TRANSIT system. In 1959, ARPA also played a role in TRANSIT, the first satellite navigation system, TRANSIT, used by the United States Navy, was first successfully tested in 1960. It used a constellation of five satellites and could provide a navigational fix approximately once per hour, in 1967, the U. S. Navy developed the Timation satellite, which proved the feasibility of placing accurate clocks in space, a technology required by GPS. In the 1970s, the ground-based OMEGA navigation system, based on comparison of signal transmission from pairs of stations. Limitations of these systems drove the need for a more universal navigation solution with greater accuracy, during the Cold War arms race, the nuclear threat to the existence of the United States was the one need that did justify this cost in the view of the United States Congress. This deterrent effect is why GPS was funded and it is also the reason for the ultra secrecy at that time

43.
Sick AG
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Sick AG, based in Waldkirch, Germany, is a global manufacturer of sensors and sensor solutions for industrial applications. The company is active in the areas of factory and logistics automation, the company employs around 7,000 employees worldwide and achieved sales of EUR1.1 billion in 2014. The company is well known for its laser scanners, which are used as sensors in the fields of facility protection, ports. Five LIDARs produced by the Sick AG were used for short-range detection on Stanley, sICK/IBEO LIDARs were also used for obstacle avoidance, mapping and pedestrian tracking on WAMbot, the autonomous vehicle that came 4th in the MAGIC2010 competition. Out of the 6,302 persons working for SICK AG in 2013,3,836 were employed in Germany, SICK AG has ranked among Germanys best employers for several years. Sick AG was founded in 1946 by Erwin Sick, he had received a license from the then US-managed local government to operate his engineering firm. The economic breakthrough came in 1952 with the production of the accident-prevention light curtain. In 1956, the company moved from Vaterstetten to Waldkirch, SICK AG has a global presence with almost 50 subsidiaries and participations as well as numerous sales agencies. According to the company’s own statements, it invests about 9% of its sales revenue in research and development each year

This lidar may be used to scan buildings, rock formations, etc., to produce a 3D model. The lidar can aim its laser beam in a wide range: its head rotates horizontally; a mirror tilts vertically. The laser beam is used to measure the distance to the first object on its path.

The version history of the Android mobile operating system began with the public release of the Android beta in …

Global Android version distribution as of August 2017. As of November, Android Marshmallow is the most widely used version of Android, running on 30.9% of all Android devices accessing Google Play, while Android Lollipop runs on 27.2% of devices (79.0% on it or newer).

Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument in Wiltshire, England, 2 miles (3 km) west of Amesbury. It consists of a ring of …

Plan of Stonehenge in 2004. After Cleal et al. and Pitts. Italicised numbers in the text refer to the labels on this plan. Trilithon lintels omitted for clarity. Holes that no longer, or never, contained stones are shown as open circles. Stones visible today are shown coloured

Stonehenge 1. After Cleal et al.

Graffiti on the sarsen stones include ancient carvings of a dagger and an axe

How focal length affects photograph composition. Three images depict the same two objects, kept in the same positions. By changing focal length and adjusting the camera's distance from the pink bottle, it remains the same size in the image, while the blue bottle's size appears to dramatically change. Also note that at small focal lengths, more of the scene is included.

Cross-section of a typical retrofocus wide-angle lens.

Field of view in APS-sized digital cameras is the same as that of a longer lens, increased by crop factor, on a full-frame 35 mm format camera.